Cauliflower Soup

Tis the season for full hearts and full bellies...and warm bellies. With the weather being as cold as it has been, it's hard to think about eating something cold for lunch. Lunch is not my favorite meal of the day. I'm always at a loss of what to make. I'm usually too hungry to go all out and make something that requires a lot of time. But I also tire easily of the typical turkey and cheese on wheat. Soup is always a good option, especially when it's paired with a fresh salad or crusty bread for dipping. I like to take advantage of the time on the weekends to make a big pot of soup; one that will leave me with plenty for the week and maybe even some for freezing.

I was invited to a friends for lunch recently, and she made a soul warming cauliflower soup with bread and salad. It was delicious and left me satisfied all the way up until dinnertime. I had never actually made cauliflower soup before, so it got me searching around for several recipes, and the one I settled on was this one from Rachael Ray. It's pretty simple to make and the effort pays off big time. You will be happy with this one! While it was simmering, I threw together a huge salad with the lettuces I received from the CSA box this week that should last several days. I now have my lunch dilemma solved for a while.

And get this...Wyatt actually liked it! I told him it was mashed potato soup.

Here you go:

Cauliflower Soup by Rachel Ray

Coarse salt and coarse black pepper
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 small heads cauliflower, or 1 large, cut into small bunches of florets
3 ribs celery and leafy tops from the heart of stalk, finely chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 quart chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half or whole milk
Hot sauce, optional
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves or chives, for garnish
1/2 cup grated Parmesan, for passing at the table

Directions
In a large pot, heat up the olive oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter, over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower florets and stir with a wooden spoon. Add celery, onion and thyme and cook for 3 minutes. Push the vegetables to 1 side of the pot. Melt 1 more tablespoon of butter on empty side of pot and add flour to the butter. Cook for 1 minute, stirring the flour in the butter. Mix in chicken broth and half-and-half. Bring up to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Puree soup using an emersion blender, food processor or blender and return to pot. I like to leave it a little chunky. Check seasoning and add a dash of hot sauce, if desired.

Garnish soup with hot pepper sauce, chopped parsley or chives and serve with grated cheese to sprinkle on top.

Stand-by's and a Thanksgiving side

Yesterday was a busy day. Actually the past two months have been busy, but yesterday was one of those days where I absolutely did not want to eat out again but didn't have a whole lot of fresh foods at home to make a decent meal out of. Then I remembered one of my "stand-by" meals that I had stashed in the freezer. I'm sure you know what a "stand-by" meal is: something that you keep the ingredients for on hand at all times and it can be quickly prepared. For most it's spaghetti or soup. Easy enough. Maybe even breakfast for dinner. That's always a great one. My favorite lately is all things I get at Trader Joe's (no surprise there, I'm sure). This is what I keep on hand in the freezer for days such as yesterday:
TJ's tempura chicken w/ sweet and sour sauce
TJ's Beijing style frozen vegetables
TJ's premade frozen brown jasmine rice
TJ's chicken egg rolls
TJ's sweet and sour sauce

Everything, except for the sweet and sour sauce, can be found in the frozen section. It's kind of like one of those stir-fry kits, except it's actually good. Those kits never seem to be enough, and the vegetables always end up soft and soggy. This works out way better, in my opinion. I usually fry the chicken up in a separate pan than the vegetables (and I use grapeseed oil or sesame oil...something that can be cooked at a high temp), heat the rice while the chicken is cooking, and then mix some of the sweet and sour sauce and the beijing sauce from the veggies and throw it all together at the last minute. I happened to have fresh broccoli and cabbage on hand last night, so I threw some of that in as well with the other veggies. The boys love it and it's usually the perfect amount for our family of four. It's also quick to make.

What's your "stand-by?" I'd love to know.

On another note, I made my sweet potato casserole today for Thanksgiving. I make it the way my mother has always made it; with a pecan praline topping. Let me tell you, it's way better than the marshmallow stuff. I've had some pretty bad casseroles, and if sweet potatoes are not done right, they can be downright disgusting. David and his sister swore they hated sweet potatoes, but once they had them cooked this way, they both say it's one of their favorite holiday dishes. I would give you my exact recipe, but I remembered Pioneer Woman makes hers the same way, so I'll just direct you to her recipe. This is also known as "I'm too lazy to get off the dang couch so I'm ripping somone else's recipe off and giving it to you." Seriously, though, it's a common way to make the casserole here in the south, and her recipe is almost exactly the same as mine.
One thing I've done differently with it this year is I've used canned organic sweet potato puree from TJ's. We'll see if it tastes as good but I was sure happy to not have to boil and mash the potatoes. Huge time saver there.

Sweet Potato Casserole that you'll actually like!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

As I said in my previous post, I had two butternut squashes on hand from the CSA box. Other than making babyfood when my babies were babies, I don't recall ever making anything with butternut squash. It's not that I don't enjoy eating them, I've just been intimidated a little by them. One of my favorite pastas is butternut squash ravioli. It's hard to come by, but if I'm ever at a restaurant that serves it, I will most definitely get it. In fact, my favorite dish in all of Atlanta is Zuzza at Figo. Zucca is a divine butternut squash ravioli with a raddichio cream sauce. I cannot go to Figo and not get it. I salivate as I drive by the restaurant just thinking about Zucca. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!

O.K., I'll stop going on about my little obsession.

Anyway, I'm certainly not going to attempt to make it; I'll leave that up to the experts.
But I had to come up with something to do with the butternut babies I had on hand.

After poking around online, I found this recipe by Ellie Krieger:

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Perfect. Right up my alley. I've watched her show before on the Food network; Healthy Appetite, and she comes up with some pretty good recipes. I had everything I needed, so I sat the boys down in front of the TV with their lunches, and I got busy in the kitchen making a huge batch of the soup. And yes, I do use the TV as a babysitter at times. Well, a lot of the time if I'm honest.

The result...delish! And I mean it. I'm trying to make myself wait until dinnertime to eat a whole bowl, but I keep sneaking by the pot and dishing out little spoonfuls. Tonight, I'll top it with a dallop of yogurt (greek yogurt) as the recipe suggests. I know some are afraid of curry...don't be. This is just a rich, flavorful and slightly sweet soup that is perfect for this season.

I can't wait until dinnertime tonight!

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Ingredients
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 medium onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (2 1/2-pound) butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth or vegetable broth
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more, to taste
2 tablespoons honey
4 teaspoons plain low-fat yogurt, for garnish
Directions
Heat oil over medium heat in a 6-quart stockpot. Add onions and garlic and saute until soft but not brown, about 6 to 7 minutes. Add the butternut squash, broth, curry powder and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until squash is tender, about 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from heat stir in honey and puree with an immersion blender or in batches in a blender until smooth. Season with salt, to taste.
Ladle into serving bowls and add a dollop of yogurt.

Getting creative with CSA

Heather recently posted about all the great things we got in our CSA boxes, so I won't list it all here. But I did want to post of pic of it all for you. I love the idea of doing CSA boxes, plus, it's always a surprise to see what you get. You do have to get creative and plan some meals around your fresh produce so it doesn't go bad, but you're usually getting what is fresh and in season at the moment and that's just what your body needs. The chicken, honey, and cheese were not in the box...they were additional purchases from Farmer Chad. We have really blown through the cheese, though. I'll definitely be buying another block this week.

I used several of my items tonight for our dinner. We started with a simple salad using the lettuces from Farmer Chad, along with the purple sweet peppers. I also topped the salad with sliced apples, candied pecans, chevere cheese with honey (a new find at Trader Joe's), and a homemade maple syrup salad dressing from Rachael Ray. It was definitely a nice departure from my typical tossed salads and the flavors were perfect for this beautiful autumn season we're in.

For dinner, I soaked black beans over night to make black beans and rice inspired by Joy. She puts curry powder in hers, and I have to say, that just takes a typical black beans and rice meal to a whole new level. It's very subtle, but the curry gives it a little bit of a sweetness. I also sauteed some onion, garlic, purple bell peppers, oregano, and white wine vinegar and threw it all into the pot with the black beans and let them all simmer for about an hour. Talk about making the whole house smell divine. While that was simmering, I braised the greens from the CSA box the way Heather does (amazing...thanks for the idea!), and grilled some chicken breasts to top off the black beans and brown rice. Once on the plate, I topped the beans and rice with a little of the cheddar cheese.

It sure feels good to have a full belly of fresh and good for you food. I've been feeling a little under the weather the past couple of days and this was one of those afternoons that I was really leaning towards not cooking. But I'm so tired of eating out and eating junk that I forced myself to get my butt in the kitchen and get to work. It's amazing how cooking can be therapeutic at times. Not only did I pull it off, I'm already feeling better for having eaten well.

I've got a plan for the acorn squash that we got in the box. I'll post about that later.
Now...if I could just get myself to the gym I'd be feeling a whole lot better about life. Unfortunately, that part of my life has really taken a hit since homeschooling. I just have to make the time.

Can't wait to see what we get in out boxes this week!

Octopus cake

Yes, it seems I have forgotten all about my food blog. I haven't really, but I've just been so busy and haven't had the time to get on here. My friend Joy started one and that reminded me about mine.

So...to start off...I'm posting pics of Wyatt's birthday cake from last week. He's been saying for months that he wanted an octopus cake. He's a little obsessed with all things nautical and is especially enamored with octopuses. I checked around online and the best I could come up with was this:

It's an Octopus cake pan from Williams Sonoma. It's something they had out a couple of summers ago, but the outlets about 30 miles north of me had some in stock. So one day last week, with both the boys in tow, I headed up to the outlets to go to ONE store. The things a mother would do , right? The cake itself is really cute without frosting. It's so intricate that it's really hard to frost (took me an hour) and when you do frost it, it covers up a lot of the detail. But, Wyatt was set on him being green with candy on his tentacles. So, this is the result:




I think it turned out pretty cute. The perfectionist in me was frustrated by how it turned out, but I know that to a child it was festive and fun. I found some cute ocean related gummie candies (fish, octopus, seahorses) so I arranged them around the cake. The cake itself was lemon flavor with cream cheese frosting. It was really tasty!

Other than that, there hasn't been many exciting things going on in the kitchen these days. David's on tour, so I've been cooking one really good and decent meal a week and then on all the other days we've been either eating out, eating leftovers, eating at other people's houses (my favorite!) or breaking out the mac and cheese and homemade chicken fingers. There are a few things that I've been wanting to get to on here. For one, remember my paella dilemma? I checked around online and ended up making my own version that turned out pretty good. I actually took pics of it, but now can't find them on my camera. Plus, I have now forgotten exactly how I made it. I know that it wasn't true paella, since true paella is so exact and complicated, but it was a good and quick substitute. I made it with chicken, shrimp, and sausage. Even made my own homemade saffron rice with basmati rice. If I can remember my method I'll post it.

Also, Jen asked me long ago to post my marinara sauce. I've hesitated because I don't really have a certain recipe or method even, but I'll try to get on here one of these days and post something for that. Other things I'd like to post...my homemade vegetable soup since we're getting into soup season, my banana bread and any other things I can think of.

Paella?

We had a spontaneous date night Monday night thanks to the MIL. I've been craving good paella ever since I saw the movie Bella (good movie, by the way). We headed down to La Fonda in Buckhead where we had wonderful paella and white sangria. It totally hit the spot and satisfied my craving. It got me thinking, thought, that paella is a pretty simple dish and one I could perfect at home. So....I'm asking for some input here. Does anyone out there have a killer recipe for paella that they just love? Would you be willing to pass it along? If not, I'll start scouring the internet for a good recipe and will begin the process of trying it out. I'd like to find one with chicken, sausage, and shrimp. I'll leave the calamari and clams to the restaurants.